Gavvy Cravath Autograph

Clifford Carlton "Gavvy" Cravath (March 23, 1881 – May 23, 1963), also nicknamed "Cactus", was an American right fielder and right-handed batter in Major League Baseball who played primarily for the Philadelphia Phillies. One of the sport's most prolific power hitters of the dead-ball era, in the eight years from 1913 to 1920 he led the National League in home runs six times, in runs batted in, total bases and slugging percentage twice each, and in hits, runs and walks once each. He led the NL in several offensive categories in 1915 as the Phillies won the first pennant in the team's 33-year history, and he held the team's career home run record from 1917 to 1924. He is one of eight players to lead the majors in home runs for a season six times in a career. However, he played his home games at Baker Bowl, a park that was notoriously favorable to batting statistics. Cravath hit 92 career homers at Baker Bowl while he had 25 homers in all his games away from home. Moreover, he was an exceptionally slow base runner; so much so, in fact, that it was actually Cravath about whom sportswriter Bugs Baer famously wrote, "His head was sure full of larceny, but his feet were honest," a distinction which, along with Cravath's extreme lack of foot speed, has long been mistakenly ascribed to Ping Bodie. More about Gavvy Cravath